the hero and the dreamer
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: He had never told her his name, not once, and she had not offered her own. They both knew that someone in their family had been, in some way or another, involved in the Battle of Hogwarts-that was the whole point of this group, descendants of those great heroes, the ones who had lived on and passed down their stories.


_**Written for the 'Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition' Round 13: Free Reign, using prompts: "Let it go", silver, and library. **_

_**Written for the 'Ten times Ten Challenge' by she who is made of stars, using Gemstone: Rose Quartz.**_

_**Written for the 'If You Dare Challenge' by Slytherin Cat, using prompt # 44, pickpocket. **_

_**Written for the 'Duct Tape Competition' by lezonne, using **_Light Blue: The peaceful color, so write about a good friendship between two characters

….

They met in the library, like always, whispering quietly to each other as they hunched over dusty textbooks that they had no true intention of ever reading. Her silver hair dripped over her shoulders, her blue eyes staring into his as though trying to seek some sort of answer from him; she smiled silently, watching as he moved one of the many chess pieces across the wooden board, laughing with pleasure when he told her she'd lost. She didn't mind losing to _him, _if it meant she could laugh quietly at his jokes, if it meant she could sit across from him and whisper secrets to each other like giddy school children.

He had never told her his name, not once, and she had not offered her own. They both knew that someone in their family had been, in some way or another, involved in the Battle of Hogwarts-that was the whole point of this group, descendants of those great heroes, the ones who had lived on and passed down their stories. They had met, being pushed together by one of the much-too-happy aides, sitting across from each other at a library table, silent and stubborn.

She was a pickpocket, slipping things from people's pockets for no other reason than because she could and because of the little voice in her head that asked _why not? _in such a teasing voice; he watched her at the learning center, watching her hands as she told herself not to, but stole anyway. He threatens to tape her hands in she every pinched any of his things, and she laughed, agreeing that maybe he ought to tape her hands anyway.

He was the taller, older of the two, though neither of those statements was much to write home about. He was tall in the sense that she was very, _very _short, and he was old in the sense that she was only eleven when they first met-he was sixteen. His curly in a scruffy way reddish-blondish hair was a mess, creeping into his brown eyes and making her laugh. She was a delicate creature compared to him, with long silver hair and silver eyes that he called expressive, but in a crazy way.

His name meant _hero_, and that's all she knew-she wasn't even sure _what _his name was, because they had agreed at that very first meeting that it didn't matter if they were both descendants of the Dark Lord himself-they weren't defined by their ancestors, and they weren't here to judge others about their family, or the roles they had played in the war. His name meant _hero_, and that was all he told her. Her name meant _dream_, and that was all she would let him know.

They called each other _hero _and _dream_ as jokes, but it quickly became the way they identified themselves to each other; he was brave and strong, determined to keep the delicate little girl safe from all harm, be it bullies or just bad tasting food. She was a dreamer, humming and a little bit out of it, sometimes, her silver eyes wide as she talked about all the ideas in her head. The _hero _and the _dream_, playing chess and drawing pictures and talking, never touching as they remained separated by their library table.

For her thirteenth birthday, he gave her a necklace, tiny gold chain ending in a pretty pink stone shaped like a little girl, a stone that he called _rose quartz_-"the perfect stone for my _dreamer_", as it was pretty and delicate like she was, yet was also clouded and hidden with deeper meanings that he had yet to fully grasp. She laughed and called him silly, but it was the best present she'd ever gotten from someone who wasn't family. It was beautiful and she swore to never take it off, because this was a gift from a _friend_, and that was special.

For her fifteenth birthday, she gifted to herself a new razor, new marks that stretch up and down her wrists, angry, red-fading-into-pink marks that she pretended are from falling out of trees. She loved her razor, pressing down on fragile, soft flesh, watching as her own blood spills, because it reminded her that this is the same blood that ran through great men and women-this is the blood of _conquerors _and _heroes. _But she was no hero, no great and mighty warrior-she is merely a scared little fifteen year old who doesn't know where she wants to go in life.

It was _hero _who found her in the girl's lavatory, and he reacted violently, screaming at her to _drop the damn razor, dream, drop it right now, or I swear to god-_but she doesn't drop it, she only told him that it was _her _razor, _her _choice. He seemed so angry, rolling up his sleeves to show her the bruises that run up and down his arm, explaining that his mother gripped him too hard sometimes, that she drank too much. She told him about her sister, who wasn't well, and the way her parents seemed to content to just drop _dream _off at the stupid learning center.

And now he was leaving her. She didn't drop the razor.

"Let it go," he told her, a firm hand wrapped around her thin wrist. She yelled at him to _leave her alone_, trying to pull from his grip, but he was twenty, and much stronger than she was. "Let it go, little dreamer, don't do this, please don't do this, I'm begging you." She dropped the razor, scowling at him as he released his grip on her wrist. She stared at the puckered, pink skin, fingers fluttering at the base of the rose quarts that hung around her neck. She hated him so dearly just then, tugging the necklace from her warm skin, tearing if off of her and handing it to him.

"Here you go, my brave _hero_," she spat at him, tossing the necklace at him, letting it smash into a dozen pieces. "Here's to you, on your very last _fucking _day." She left him, wishing she could steal the entire world away from him, so that he'd have no choice but to come back to her. She wished he'd change his mind and decide that leaving the center-leaving _her-_is a terrible idea, but _fucking hero _left anyway, as if he doesn't care.

But now he was back-a year later, though he swore he doesn't plan on staying. It was just one last hello, one last game of chess between the two of them before he went to join the Phoenixes, who were soldiers that the Ministry had been employing in place of Aurors. He beat her, and she let her silver hair droop across the library table, and she swore that when she turned seventeen, she wanted to join him with the Phoenix.

Before he left, she asked him for her name, and he smiled. (She doesn't expect an answer, but then he opened his mouth, and suddenly, it all made sense. _He _made sense. She understood, now, why she had wanted to be his to be his best friend from the beginning.

"_Who are you?" she asked him, and he smiled, replying that he was hero, but she shook her head. "No, who are you, really? What's your name, the one your parents gave you-what's the name you were born with?"_

"_I'm Conlan. Seamus Finnegan was my great-great-great-great grandfather. What about you, little dreamer? Who, in this wide, wide world are you?" hero, her hero, who rescued her a thousand times a day and told her she was wonderful and better than anyone she knew, and she wasn't defined by the blood in her veins. The name meant nothing to her, but she smiled, repeating it in her mind. _

"_Aisling and I'm the great-great-great granddaughter of Luna Lovegood and Rolf Scamander." dream, his beautiful little dream, who was sad and stole things and wrapped her tiny fingers around his thick wrists. The name meant everything to her, picked by her grandmother, who thought it accurately reflected the woman named Luna, who had once done something beautiful. _

"_Would you like to come with me, Aisling, my dream? I'm sure your parents wouldn't mind if you came with me, right? Who cares about being seventeen or not-we can fight together, side by side. Come with me, Aisling, please?" _

"_Yes." She had nowhere else to go, and here was a friend, offering to take her on an adventure, to make a difference in the world-she had to leave with him, with this wonderful boy who wanted to save her, and she had to leave now, before it was too late and all the good that he brought with him was gone. _

"_Yes, I'll go with you, hero." Because he was Conlan and she was Aisling, but before that, they had been hero and dream-and that's how they'd die, wasn't it, the fighter and the dreamer, hand in hand? "Yes, I'll go everywhere with you-you're my best friend, of course I'll follow you to the ends of the earth."_


End file.
